Confusion at Mt Carmel as tender for new block issued days after closure announcement

A few days after the government announced it would be closing down Mount Carmel Hospital, a new tender was published to demolish and build a whole block on the site aimed at psychiatric care, leading to confusion among healthcare professionals.

Last May, Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela said he was going to abandon his predecessor’s plans to build a new psychiatric hospital near Mater Dei, a commitment Chris Fearne never kept, and close down Mount Carmel once and for all.

The Minister insisted that this was a policy decision based on modern medical practice and that mental illness should be treated like any other illness rather than patients being segregated.

Announcing that the first 100 patients will be moving out of Mount Carmel this year, all patients were expected to be transferred to other caring facilities, including at Mater Dei, and the hospital would be shut down.

Joe Etienne Abela’s move was received positively.

Yet, in a decision that confounded the medical profession, in June, the same Health Ministry published a new tender for a massive block at Mount Carmel to be demolished and rebuilt to offer psychiatric facilities. The tender condradicts the Minister’s announcement on government plans to deal with mental health patients.

The tender is worth more than €10 million and will be financed through EU funds.

To complicate matters further, the tender’s medical brief (a document explaining the intended use of the new 16-male ward) indicates that the provision of psychiatric care—the same currently offered at Mount Carmel—is one of the specific functions of the new ward.

Asked for an explanation given the Health Ministry’s bold announcement just a few days before the new tender was issued, a spokesman for Minister Abela admitted that the medical brief for the tender had already been prepared before his announcement to close the hospital and was not changed for the tender.

He insisted that his announcement to close Mount Carmel once and for all was not changing and that the €10 million new ward would be used for something else, still to be defined.

“The Ministry for Health and Active Ageing is unequivocal in its drive to a phased closure of Mount Carmel as an institution that provides acute and chronic psychiatric care. This decision follows modern trends in psychiatry, and these were emphasised in a series of discussions with the relevant specialists (most notably the Malta Association of Psychiatrists), other stakeholders, the Opposition and all unions, except the Medical Association of Malta (MAM),” the spokesman said.

Asked to explain why the government was spending more than €10 million on a new ward at the same time that it was closing the hospital, the Ministry said:

“The Ministry is equally determined to proceed with past plans to provide badly needed repairs and renovations to the existing infrastructure. Hence, it proceeded with the intended tender. Since the premises enjoy significant green spaces, the Ministry is considering altering their use to older person care, palliative care, or both. Therefore, while the overriding principle is to remove psychiatry from the facility, the site will be retained by the Ministry and put to alternative medical use. Of course, it is within the Ministry’s remit to alter the medical brief.”

The tender, which will be financed through the EU’s Next Generation Fund, includes unusual clauses and extremely onerous terms, which has led observers to say it may indicate that the procurement process may possibly be directed towards a pre-determined bidder.

Among these is a provision that the project should be completed in two years, which is considered a very tight deadline.

Also, the tender specifies that the bidders are bound to make only a 5% markup on the project’s cost, which is unrealistic for prospective bidders and goes against EU competition rules.

The Ministry did not reply to questions on why these clauses were included in the tender.